


Where is the Moon?

by paperswan



Series: Where I want to keep existing. [2]
Category: The Goldfinch (2019), The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Genre: Boris POV, Character Study, Crying, Falling In Love, Feels, First Time, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, M/M, Making Out, POV First Person, Pining, these idiots never voice their feelings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:28:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23217766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperswan/pseuds/paperswan
Summary: From Boris’s POV, a series of nights in Las Vegas that Theo doesn’t remember (or so Boris thinks). Kissing, sleeping, laughing, singing, etc. Two idiots falling in love in the dark.
Relationships: Theodore Decker/Boris Pavlikovsky
Series: Where I want to keep existing. [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1669249
Comments: 18
Kudos: 132





	1. poolside

**Author's Note:**

> Ello! I’m back with my second fic ever, which is, surprise, another Theo/Boris! Shocking, I know. I love them. And right now I have no shortage of free time, sitting at home all day long while the world ends. People are telling me Jesus is coming, and all I have to say to that is, I’m definitely going to hell.  
> I’m thinking about maybe writing an AU or something?  
> Anyway, hope you like this <3

There are lots of things he forgot from when we were together, a lot of hazy nights. Swimming and singing and laying in his bed, on our backs, then rolling over and into each other. Every part of my body was attracted to his like magnets, like he was centre of gravity. He pulled me to him. 

So many things happened. Some of them, probably, even I don’t remember. 

But this is what I do remember.

It was after the first time I kissed him (and he kissed me back). I was sure he didn’t remember, but now I wonder if he did. I thought I probably loved him more than he loved me. I looked at him always, out of the corner of my eye, during English or on the bus or while we watched TV. He never seemed to notice how much I looked at him. I wanted him to look back at me, maybe smile, maybe say something that was not a lie. I wanted him to stop pretending it was nothing. We were always pretending it was nothing.

One day, after school, at his house, we watched an old movie with no colour. He was pressed against my side, and I kept still so he wouldn’t move away. Cigarette smoke drifted lazy in the air around our heads. We’d had some beers, but that was not enough to make us very drunk—-that’s why I think about this one night so much, because there wasn’t lots of shit in our blood to make us crazy. No excuse for it. What happened, happened because we wanted it to.

I looked sideways at him. “Potter.”

“What?” He didn’t look away from the screen.

“Let’s go outside.”

“Outside?”

I rolled my eyes and nudged his shoulder. “Yes, outside. Are you having hearing problems?”

Still he didn’t look at me, just took a drag from his cigarette. “Why?”

“Because. I am bored. And this movie, is shit, I have no idea what happens, it makes no sense.”

For some reason, he smiled. Only a tiny bit, his lips twitching, but that made me happy.

“What?” I asked. 

He shook his head, still smiling, as he ashed his cigarette on the nightstand. “Nothing.”

“Oh, is nothing, really?” I scoffed. “Always is nothing with you.”

He ignored that and pointed at one of the old guys on the screen. “Look, that one’s Frank Sinatra.”

“Frank Sinatra?”

Then he laughed, for real, and leaned into me. 

“Potter, what the hell are you laughing about?”

“Nothing, nothing. Just. I like how you said it.”

“Frank Sinatra?”

“Yeah.” Now he finally was looking at me. Smiling. No more look away, no more pretend there is nothing.

“You are huge idiot, Potter, you know.”

“Whatever.”

“Come, let’s go outside now.”

“Why?”

“I want to. We can swim.”

“I’m tired.”

“You are always tired. Wimpy Americans. Come on.”

He sighed, but he stubbed out his cigarette and followed me.

Outside, the air was wet and heavy. There was no light except from the kitchen inside, and the pool glowed green. We sat on the edge, and I put my feet in the water. 

The ripples reflected in his glasses, and he wasn’t smiling anymore, but his eyes were less sad. He was probably just thinking. He did this so much, I was used to seeing him stare silently at walls or the floor.

I wanted to distract him from whatever he was thinking about. Keep making him smile. But I couldn’t think of how. I laid on my back on the concrete, my feet still in the water. The stars here were so tiny and pathetic, I could barely see them. I couldn’t find the moon anywhere.

He was quiet, we said nothing, and the water sloshed around my ankles when I swung my feet back and forth.

“Where did the moon go?” I asked.

He stared into the pool, said nothing.

I sighed. “Is supposed to always be there, no? Is night. So where is it now?” My shirt was damp with sweat. Everything was wet and sticky, like being inside a boiling pot, temperature rising.

I reached my hand towards his hair. “Potter, hold still.”

He flinched. “What—“

“Something in your hair. There. You’re welcome.” I showed him the piece of lint I’d plucked from his messy head, then brought it close to my face and stared at it. “You can make wish on this, you know.”

“No, you can’t.”

“Yes, you can. I know these things.” I propped myself up on my elbow so I could see his face better. “What wish do you make?”

He pushed my hand away, muttered, “Stop.”

I gave up, dropped the lint, and laid back down. When it was like this, I could tell. Things happened in fast slow-motion, and I had no control over what I did or said—But that’s not true. I did have control. It was only that I had stopped caring.

“Well,” I said, and my voice was quieter, “I will tell you what I want to wish for.”

It was the most quiet place in the world, right then, at the edge of our pool in the dark. My feet in the water. His eyes far away.

“I want a new life,” I said. I rolled the piece of lint between my fingertips. I stared at the sky until it blurred black. “New life, huh? Like, be a baby again with different parents in different place. Start over. But I would know everything I did the first time, so I would not be so stupid. Would be wise. Do things the right way. Everyone would love me.”

He looked at me, just a little, without turning his head. “You’re drunk.”

“Am always drunk, Potter. So are you. It is the only way to live.” I closed my eyes. Far away, a bird cawed. 

When he spoke, it was so quiet that I barely heard.

“If you wished for a new life, we never would’ve met.”

I opened my eyes. I could not help it. I smiled. He cared whether or not he had met me. I hit his arm gently with the back of my hand. “Don’t worry, Potter. I would still know you. Doesn’t matter where I was. Meeting you is like...” I rubbed my eyes, and my head hurt. “... it will always happen.”

“You mean...like, fate?”

“Hmm?”

“That’s fate. Something that’s meant to happen. You can’t stop it.”

I sighed, smiling. “Yes. That is right. Fate.”

He pulled his eyes away from the water and looked at me. His gaze felt warm and solid.

I stared back. “Stop looking at me like that. You are crazy.”

“You’re crazier,” he said. Something in his face was gone, the tenseness. It was more soft. He laid down on his back next to me.

I rolled onto my side to face him. “Potter.”

He turned. 

“Tell me something,” I said.

“What d’you want me to say?” he asked. His voice was scratchy.

“Anything.” I closed my eyes again.

“You’re a douchebag.”

“Mhm.”

“You’re my best friend.”

“Mhm.”

“Are you listening?”

“Yes.”

“Asshole.”

I kissed him.

And he kissed me back.

It was faster than the first time, and he did not hesitate as much. It was so hot—-hot concrete underneath us, hot air, hot skin, hot lips. His fingers were hot when he grabbed my wrist. His breath was hot. Kissing him was not like the girls I had kissed. It was not like having sex with some girl. With a girl, there was always something between me and her, even when our bodies were touching we weren’t really together. When he kissed me I felt it everywhere. Being struck by hot lightning. My heart was crying because it was so, so good. He took me with him, somewhere away from there, without ever leaving the poolside.

His breath was fast.

“You sound like you will pass out,” I whispered.

“You wish.”

I wanted to ask him if he remembered the last time we’d done this. If he remembered all the other things that had happened. Forget the kissing—-what about me holding him? What about my face buried in his hair before the sun came up? What happened to those things? Did they disappear? I tried so hard to keep them, but they slipped away like little fishes in the shallow part of the ocean, silver glittering in sun. So many things I should have said.

If he didn’t remember, they didn’t exist.

“We should go inside now.”

“Don’t want to get up.”

“Lazy piece of shit.”

“Where did the moon go?”

“...the hell should I know, I’m not the moon keeper...”

“Well, I miss it.”

Quiet. Fingers touching. Hot lips and breathing. Is nothing. Don’t say it. Just me and him and nothing.

“Goodnight, Potter.”

And he whispered, “Goodnight.”

Sleeping by the poolside, hands touching. Is nothing.


	2. how we measure love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello people, I have written more of this!  
> Whenever I write Theo and Boris, for some reason I get my own feelings and personal shit mixed up with the fictional feelings and fictional shit(this is what happens when people like Donna Tartt have the audacity to write complex characters). In case it’s interesting, I listened to 'Even if it’s a Lie' by Matt Maltese while I wrote this. And now I’m sad. Writing about this combined with such a sad song made me think about the person I’m in love with and how I might never see her again because school was cancelled with the whole coronavirus thing and I’m not sure if I’m going back to school in the fall but anyway now that i have officially said way too much, I’ll shut up <3

After it had happened once, and then twice, and then three times, it was clear there were rules for kissing Theo. The rules were these: One, no kissing when sober (only when we are absolutely shitfaced). Two, only kiss in the dark (I think we had it in our heads that if it was in the dark, it was more secret). Three, and this is the most important, don’t talk about the kissing, after. Do it, fast and sloppy and drunk. Then stop. Move away. Go to sleep. Forget. Say nothing. And when morning comes, don’t look. Those were the rules. Neither of us said, but we knew. Me, I would have been happy to crush those fucking rules. But I was afraid that if I did, the little bit of freedom we had would mess up.

We always passed out somewhere, in the living room or kitchen or next to the pool. Often, we just didn’t make it to his bed. And—I don’t know if he thought about this too or if he was much, much more drunk than I was—I wondered what would happen if we started kissing in bed. Kissing by the pool was one thing, and so was making out with our sunburnt backs against the sofa while the Wheel of Fortune bastard shouted different letters. But if we kissed in bed? What would happen? I was terrified and nervous and excited and I wanted to know.

I woke up one time--it was sometime after morning, maybe into the afternoon. We were on opposite sides of his bed, turned away from each other. 

He had a nightmare, hiccuping and crying.

I rolled over. “Potter.”

He shook his head. 

“Oh, for--Potter. Come here.”

He rolled over and into me, quickly, and hid his face in my chest before I could look at him for too long.

“S’okay,” I said into his hair. “A dream. You’re okay.”

“No,” he said, voice muffled in my shirt.

I didn’t say anything else, just held him tight until he fell asleep.

The day ended and night came and Potter’s dad and Potter’s dad’s ladyfriend were still gone and would probably not come back. We got out of bed and pushed each other into the pool and drank a lot of vodka and cheap lemonade, and we did a few lines, and then he went inside again. He laid on the floor in the living room curled into a ball like a kitten. He was crying. Not making noise--this was the kind of crying that was much worse than the loud kind. There was no shaking or wailing or words. He stared at nothing and cried. He was gone, into his head, and crying quietly because he could not stop.

I went for a piss, and when I came out I walked in to find him like that.

I said, “Potter, stop crying. We’re not done yet.”

He didn’t move or look up.

The TV was on, but the sound was turned off, so the silent glow of the screen played over his face.

I turned in a circle and looked for Popchyk. The dog would calm him down. But I couldn’t see the stupid dog anywhere, so I went to the kitchen and got some water and a granola bar. When I walked into the living room, I tripped and spilled some of the water, muttered, “shit fuck,” and then dropped onto the floor next to him. “Here, Potter. Water and food. For you. Come, sit up now. Stop being a shit.”

He did sit up, leaning his back against the couch cushion. His face was pink. He hadn’t slept for a long time.

I gave him the water. 

He stared at it. “What’s that?”

I laughed. “Water, idiot. We have not seen it in long time, I know. Here.”

He took it and brought it to his mouth for a tiny sip. Then he must have realised how thirsty he was as he quickly drank the rest.

“Good?” I asked. 

He shrugged. 

“You are so ungrateful, Potter.” I moved so I was beside him, back against the couch, with our shoulders pressed together. 

Then we were quiet. A lot of times we were loud, yes, and we shoved and punched each other and cursed into each other’s ears and laughed at things that didn’t make sense to anyone else. Then a few minutes would pass and we stopped shouting. We stopped running and jumping around, and we sat on the floor pressed into each other’s sides, and we said nothing. We looked into the air and shared our last cigarette while pictures moved over the television screen like ghosts. 

Ever since I met Theo I felt like I was dreaming. I don’t know what it was, but everything about him was away from the real world. He had dreams himself, too, all the time. They were nightmares, though, bad dreams that made it so hard for him to breathe that I always ended up shoving him awake. I would rest against him, throw my arm over him, feel his crashing breaths go up and down, until, after a long time, they finally crashed a little less. Until I could look at him and see a little less wildfire in his eyes, so I could know he was not burning too badly. With him I lost that last bit of telling time I still had, and there was only dark and then light and then dark again. If I was with him I didn’t care if it was dark. He didn’t make it any brighter, but he made me less scared. 

Now we were quiet and I wanted to say something but there was nothing to say that mattered.

But he spoke first. 

He said, “The world really sucks, you know?”

I looked at him, quickly. 

His skin was raw and freckled from the sun.

I swallowed the bad taste in my mouth. “I know.”

His hand was tense around the water glass in his lap.

“You and me,” I said, “we know how shit goes down.”

That made him laugh. A little puff of air and a quirk of his lips, but that was it.

I nudged his shoulder. A shoulder nudge meant, hey. “Come on. We cannot be feeling sorry for ourselves. Or who would take care of all the idiots?”

“I thought I was the idiot.”

“We are both idiots. But we are the best idiots.”

We had fallen even closer; his hair tickled my ear.

I kept talking.

“I have dreams too, you know? Not nightmares. But not very good, either. I can see other people in them, doing stuff while I’m not there. I can see my father, and sometimes my mother, but I do not remember what she looked like, so I can’t really see her. Can just feel that she is there. And they love each other very much, my father and my mother.” I shrugged. “If they did actually love each other in real life, I do not know. I know little about my mother. But it could be the...what is the word for the everything in the world? The universe. Universe tries to tell me something while I am sleeping, and that is it. That they did not love me as much as I wanted because they loved each other so much...only so much love to go around...my mom, she used it on my dad...and my dad used his love on her, and that is why they did not love as much as they could have, and...”

I stopped talking. I thought maybe I had been talking so much that he had fallen asleep, but he moved his head away from my shoulder to look up at me through the hair in his face. There was a wrinkle between his eyebrows, and I wanted to tell him that if he wasn’t careful it might be there forever and he would look like an old man, but suddenly it wasn’t funny anymore.

“Boris,” he said, “that’s not how love works.”

I kept my voice quiet so I wouldn’t break the frozen second in time we were living in, so we could stay there for as long as possible. “Oh, yes? Because you are the expert on love?”

He rolled his eyes. “I know at least more than you.”

“Oh, he does! He knows more than old idiot Boris. Go on, then, tell me how love works since you are the Dumbledore about it.”

His lips twitched into a half smile. His head fell back onto my shoulder. He yawned. “Just, you make it sound like everyone has, like, a rationed amount of love they’re allowed to have.” He made his voice sound deeper as he said, “Like, ‘here’s your gallon of love, and if you use it up, sucks to be you.’”

I laughed. Loudly, so I was a little afraid I might have broken the frozen second. But it seemed to still be in place. “Is that not how it is?”

“You can’t measure love, shitsack. It isn’t a physical substance.”

“Oh, it is very pych--physc--” I stumbled over the word. “Whatever you said.”

“Physical.”

“Yes.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Yes.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Yes.”

“Shut up. God, you’re such a motherfuck.” But his voice did not sound like I was a motherfuck at all. His voice sounded okay and happy, not like he was crying.

We were quiet for a minute. The TV’s glow moved over us. The little bit of light in the room got smaller, and the dark got bigger.

“Well, anyway, Potter, you are wrong. I do know much about love.”

“Mhm.” He was staring into nothing again, but it was not bad this time. He was smiling a little, still. Breathing slowly.

“How drunk are you right now?” I asked, and it was a question I had probably never asked him. But the reason I asked had nothing to do with drinking. It had to do with the fact that I wanted to kiss him, and I wasn’t sure if he would kiss me back this time. Once it was started I could tell, but starting it was placing a bet on if tonight was a night to pretend or to stop pretending.

I moved my leg on top of his.

He let me.

So I thought, what the hell, and I kissed him.

It was hard with us sitting side by side, so I moved to kiss him better, and he tilted his chin up to meet me there, and one of his hands grabbed my tee-shirt. I was nervous because I was kissing him but I wasn’t kissing him fast like I usually would have. When you kiss fast it is easy to make someone think you only care about their lips or what is in their pants, but when you kiss slowly it’s almost impossible to pretend you don’t care.

I cared too much for my good.

I kissed him slowly, little pauses for breaths in between, and when he moved closer, I held the back of his neck. I kissed him harder--not faster, but deeper. Like I was searching for something. Like there were answers and we had to touch each other to find them. But I think maybe we did not really want answers. Once you have answers you can’t ask questions anymore. I wanted to ask questions forever, the same ones every time, over and again: will you let me, will you let me, will you let me? I will as long as you let me.

He buried his hands in my hair.

And I breathed harder.

And soon we were not on the floor anymore, not in the living room. We were tumbling around, we were in his room, we were in his bed in a mess of blanket and pillows and it was not possible to tell who was who. I might have spoken. I might have whispered something, maybe “come on” or “this okay?” or “I love you” and “a lot.” I always talked much more than he did, but I did not say a lot that mattered. I could say ten thousand words and still not say anything out loud.

I took off my shirt.

He looked at me.

I gave him a little smile that was hard to see because it was so dark. “Come on, Potter. You have seen all this before.”

He smiled. “I know.” And he took off his shirt.

Soon there was not much left to be taken off, and then nothing. Were we still living by the same rules as before? Did things in the dark still stay in the dark after we did them? He kissed me and I kissed him and we were sticky with sweat and kisses and vodka splashed with lemonade instead of lemonade splashed with vodka. He touched my neck and my collarbones, the corner of my mouth and then my ear and then my back and my waist and my hips and everything was everything. I tried not to make any noise because I didn’t want to break the frozen moment, but by now it was impossible to break. We both made noises. I breathed into his mouth and he breathed into mine and one of us whispered fuck. Fall asleep at the same time, don’t think anymore, don’t say anything, this stays here and goes nowhere else and that means we’ll have it forever. Just one of those nights.


	3. san diego beaches

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaand here is chapter three, hello! it’s been more than a couple weeks now, but I got stuck on this one because it’s quite a bit longer and I’m also just really bad at writing anything resembling an actual plot line. But anyway, I can’t for the life of me figure out how to put words in italics when I post stuff--there’s probably some special trick to it that I don’t know about. oh wellll <3 <3 <3

“I want to go to the beach.”

We were lying on the living room floor side by side, and I had been talking for a long time. Potter pretended to listen while he stared at the patterns on the ceiling.

This time, he sighed and said, “You want to go everywhere.”

I glanced at him--a triangle of light from the window slanted over his face and made him more golden--and I smiled. “No. Not everywhere. I have already been everywhere. Now I want only to see the ocean.”

“Why?”

“Because. Is beautiful. Water and good food. And the girls are practically naked.”

He rolled his eyes. “You’re such a--”

I pushed him, grinning. “Is like heaven. In Florida. In San Diego.”

He laughed and shook his head. “San Diego isn’t in Florida, it’s in California.”

“California, then. Let’s go there.” I pushed him again.

He shoved me back and laughed when I poked him in the stomach. Soon he mashed a pillow into my face. 

“You gonna kill me? Took long enough,” I said

“Asshole.”

I pushed the pillow away and tackled him, easily pinning him beneath me. He laughed and kicked me, and we knocked over a beer bottle. The beer spilled into the brown carpet, a wet shape that smelled of alcohol. That smell lives in my memory—sometimes, these days, even though it has been so long, I walk into a bar and smell beer and become sixteen again, and I expect to turn and see him, his glasses smudged with fingerprints as he tips his head back to drink.

He stopped fighting me, gave up and relaxed, while my hands still held down his wrists. The way he looked at me--as though he searched for something. His lips twitched into a smile. “Sure,” he said. “Let’s go to San Diego.”

After that, we watched a movie and smoked a few cigarettes. He fell asleep. 

That night, I went back to my house. It had been a week since I’d been home for longer than an hour. I always slept at Potter’s house. His house felt more like mine now. I did not think my papa would be home, but he was.

He sat on the sofa, his head tilted back on the cushion. He was asleep. There were bottles on the floor by his feet. The bottle glass glowed brown from the reflection of the streetlights through the window.

My papa woke up.

His beard needed a shave. He glared at me with black eyes. In Russian, he asked, “Where have you been now?”

I took too long to answer. “Friend’s house.”

He stared at me. His hands were loose at his sides, fingers dirty and smudged with something grey. “Friend’s house? You do not have friends.”

I said nothing. Why had I come back? There was no point. I should have stayed at Potter’s house and fallen asleep next to him on the living room floor and it wouldn’t matter.

“Are you listening to me?” he asked. His eyes didn’t look sleepy anymore. He was awake now. “I said you have no friends.”

“I heard you.”

“Oh, you did, eh? Little fucker. Always telling lies.”

“I wasn’t lying.”

Bad mistake.

After he hit me, he cried, still shouting in two different languages, and I went up to the bed I hardly ever laid in anymore. My face hurt, and I stared at the darkness of the small window and saw things in my head, goldish hair and chapped lips and eyes squinting behind glasses. I heard laughs and “shut up, you asshole,” and soft breathing.

In the morning, I did not go back to Potter’s house. He would wonder where I was, but I told myself I did not care. I missed the bus and didn’t want to wait for the next, so I walked under my faded umbrella, one hour and then two, until the heat went all the way to my bones. I reached the grocery store. I didn’t go inside. Since Theo and I had met, I had not gone to the store by myself. I had not gone many places without him. We were together every day. Being with him was like anything else, like breathing and waking up. The place next to me felt empty because he was not there. It was stupid, and I missed him, and I hated myself for that, because missing someone is horrible. It makes it so you cannot be strong.

It was another day later when I went back to his house. The car was not in the driveway. The house stood lonely and burning, a rock in the middle of a huge desert. I went around to the back and let myself in.

He was laying on the floor in the middle of the hall with his eyes closed, and Popchyk curled up against him. The dog stood and ran in circles through my legs to say hello.

I kicked Theo. 

He groaned. 

“Come on, Potter. How long have you been here? On the floor like a dead man.” I kicked him again, less hard. I wanted him to push me away, open his eyes, to laugh a little so I knew he was okay.

“Fuck off,” he muttered, his eyes still closed.

“Loser. You are hungry. I’m hungry, too. Is there food? Chicken or something? Granola bars?”

“I said fuck off.”

Something had happened while I was gone. With his dad. Or maybe a nightmare. Something I hadn’t been there for. If it had been his dad, I could’ve kept it from getting too bad. I was good at distracting the man. And nightmares came all the time, but they could be fixed with an arm thrown over his waist or a beer in the dark while I talked about the beaches I wanted to go to. And he could roll his eyes and say, of course I wanted to go there, I wanted to go everywhere. But I didn’t want to go everywhere anymore. Those days there were not many places I wanted to go. The only reason I wanted to go anywhere was because I saw him there with me. There was no longer a world or a single city where we were not together.

I sighed. “Did Xandra--”

“Fuck off, Boris, I’m serious, just go away! Get out.” His voice cracked.

“What happened when I was gone?” I asked him.

“Nothing happened.”

“Then—“ 

In one second, he opened his eyes and sat up, about to shout something at me--but his mouth quickly shut. He stared at my face, which was still bruised half purple. His eyes rested on my cheek. 

Popchyk sniffed at my ankles, little wet nose poking at the cuffs of my jeans.

Potter cleared his throat. “What happened?” he asked, the little shit, ignoring how that was supposed to be my question to him.

I looked him in the eyes and said, “Nothing happened.”

He flinched. 

I took a step back. “Well, since you are having a stick up your ass, I guess I will get a beer and watch TV. By myself.”

He slouched back against the wall and grunted. “Alcohol’s the only constant in your life, anyway.”

“What does that mean? What the fuck is ‘constant?’”

He shrugged, not looking at me. “Use a dictionary.”

“Oh, shut up, you are my fucking dictionary.”

He rolled his eyes. “It means loyalty.”

I paused to think about what that really meant, and when I thought I sort of realised what he meant, I said, “Fuck off.”

He smiled at me sarcastically. “You have a way with words, you know?”

“So do you.“

“Fuck—“

“Fuck you.” I turned to go to the kitchen, then I stopped and faced him again. “What? You think that I am the one in love with the booze? I am not the one on the floor like a pathetic--”

“You know, I’m really not in the mood right now to deal with your shit, why don’t you just go steal your goddamn beer.”

“Steal?” I snapped. “So now I am stealing from you. I was never your friend, I am just piece of shit who comes and steals from you every fucking--”

“Friends don’t make the fuck out every night, Boris! Friends don’t suck each other’s dicks! Ever think of that?”

I looked away--I could not look at him--and stared at the wall instead. The silence was like not being able to breathe. 

“I do not make you do anything,” I said quietly. “You do it because you want to.”

“It wasn’t supposed to get this far.” It was barely a whisper. 

“What did you say?” 

He stared at the floor. “Boris—”

“No. Fuck does that even mean, Potter? Fuck does it mean? Tell me.”

He said nothing.

“You have nothing to say, huh? Well, I do not know. Whatever. I will fuck off now, since that’s what you want, and you can lay hear like goddamned shit if that is what you are wanting to be. ‘This far?’ What the hell is this far? Nothing, nothing, nothing, is always fucking nothing with you, I could have saved your fucking life hundred more fucking times and would still be not a single fucking thing, just—”

“I didn’t mean—”

“I’m leaving. You want to be by yourself, so I’m leaving. And I will not come back!”

His face had crumpled.

I turned and left.

Before I was out of the house, I heard him say, “Fuck.” He said it softly, without any strength at all. 

—

I lied—I did not stay away forever. It was barely a week, really, and I watched TV and ate chips and wondered if he was going to school without me. I had no way to know. I would probably never go back. To hell with it, I decided, and the books and the glasses and quiet laughs during reading and fuck it fuck it fuck it. I didn’t need to go back.

A few days later the phone rang. I did not answer it, and it rang again. It was still ringing when I came down the stairs, pulled it off the wall, and snapped in Russian, “Whatever you want, you asshole, I can’t fucking help you!”

“Boris?”

I blinked. “Potter?”

“Yeah, it’s me…” It took a second for me to figure out what was 

I leaned against the kitchen counter and frowned. I was supposed to be angry with him. But there wasn’t enough anger left to fight everything else I felt. “What...how do you have this number?”

“You...gave it to me. A while ago, I don’t know—“ His voice broke off.

“You’re drunk,” I said. It was not a question. “Or high.”

“Probably both,” he said, as though admitting he had just killed himself.

I sighed.

Then he started to cry. Or maybe he had already been crying. But now it was obvious, little shuddering sobs and gasps for breath.

My hand tightened around the edge of the counter. “Potter—“

“Sorry,” he said. “I’m really sorry—but I just—sorry.”

“It’s—“

He ended the call.

I put the phone back and walked to his house as the sun sank down into the ground. When I got there, it was dark, and Popchyck’s barked from the backyard.

Around the pool, bits of bottle glass were shattered across the concrete. It glinted like copper, like sharp golden rain. He sat at the edge of the pool, hugging himself tightly. He wasn’t wearing shoes.

I walked over the sea of glass and lowered myself onto the ground a few feet away.

The dusky light pulled shadows over his face. Warm, sunburnt, with little creases in the corners of his eyes from squeezing them shut so tightly. 

“Hey,” I murmured.

He didn’t move, but he opened his eyes and stared into the pool water, the blue ripples that sloshed at the concrete. He sucked in a breath before slowly releasing his folded arms. His hand, as he showed it to me, was sticky with blood.

I took it and stared at the cut. “Accident?”

He nodded.

“Were the bottles empty when you did that?”

He nodded and whispered, “It was the stuff in the cabinet.”

I sighed. A couple of weeks ago, I’d put a bottle of Beluga Russian vodka in the cabinet in his kitchen. My father drank it when he had men over, but I had taken it instead.

Potter shivered. His skin shone with sweat.

“Potter, how much?” I shook him when he didn’t answer. “How much of that did you drink?”

He groaned quietly, wincing, and shook his head. 

“Answer me. How much?”

“I dunno--I don’t feel good.” He hunched over, breathing uneven.

“Son of a bitch.” I took his arm and tried to get him to stand, but it was no use. “Potter, come on. Fuck. Is bad. You shouldn’t have--Where did you even get that?“

“What d’you mean?” he asked. He choked on something in his throat. “You left it in the cabinet—“

“Fuck.“

He choked again, his face almost grey. He was going to be sick, sicker than life.

“You’re gonna be sick, huh? Fuck. Guess that’s what you fucking get, you piece of—“

I stopped because then he coughed up blood, red splattered into the pool water, and he sobbed out, “It hurts, it hurts really bad--” and I was afraid he might die before I got a chance to actually tell him off for drinking an entire bottle of vodka. I managed to get him to his feet, practically carrying him around the broken glass and inside the house. We got to the bathroom, but before he reached the toilet, he puked on himself.

He groaned. “Shit—“

“I know—here—it’s okay.”

I rubbed his back while he let it out, because I could not do anything else. It was worse this time. 

When he was finished throwing up, I pulled the dirty tee-shirt over his head and balled it up, and then he was sitting on the floor, leaning against the toilet bowl in just his jeans, tears ran down his flushed cheeks and his chest heaved with every breath and suddenly he was so breakable. I always wanted to protect him, but I was not good at it. I am not good at being for other people without getting it wrong. I always mess it up.

I scooted closer and slowly raised my hand to push the hair out of his eyes. “Hey. Is okay.”

He choked a little on breath and tears, then shook his head.

“It still hurts?” I asked. Sometimes his throat would burn and he couldn’t fall asleep for hours. He never remembered in the mornings.

He did not answer me, though. Just cried. His breath stank.

“Okay,” I said. I moved to stand. “Be right back, okay?”

“—no.” He grabbed my arm with his uncut hand, his grip weak. “Don’t leave.” 

So I didn’t. I didn’t know what to do. I never thought it mattered, really, how we lived then, doing whatever we felt like at the moment, drinking and shouting and sleeping and staying awake, but maybe it was finally too much. Ever since I met him I could tell he was tired, because of life, because of his mother, because of how fast everything changed. Sometimes I thought I knew him, but I didn’t. I was not really good enough to make him feel better. All I could do was be there.

“Potter, hey. You need to breathe, yes? You’ll pass out cold if you do not breathe, idiot. C’mon.” I sat pressed against him, felt the shivers racking through his body, and nudged him gently.

He pressed his face into my shoulder. “Sorry.”

“Shut up, okay? Just shut up.”

One night, another time by the pool, he had told me he was afraid he was a terrible person. I had laughed and told him that was a stupid thing to be afraid of. And also that he didn’t stack up as a terrible person. Because terrible people don’t care. And he cared a lot.

“Shhh. Malia, ty vse dobre. Ya obitsyayu. Ya tebe lyublyu.” 

When I spoke in Ukrainian, his breathing calmed a little, so I kept going. I don’t remember the rest of what I said, because it was fast and quiet rambling, nonsense things I admitted without thinking, because he could not understand me. I said, I don’t know what to do—this is my fault—it’s okay, don’t cry—do you know I love you?—I’m sorry. Don’t cry. It’s okay.

The yellow bathroom lights flickered, once. All these memories now stain my mind like wine. Far away and spicy sweet.

Theo stopped crying. His breaths came evenly now, in and out. He curled against me, my arms around him.

He seemed to fall asleep. My fingers ran through his dirty, goldish hair.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. Not asleep.

I froze for a tiny moment, then rolled my eyes. “Don’t be stupid.” I tugged on his hair, lightly. “You have not to be sorry.”

“But…” 

“But nothing.”

“Boris, what happened to your face?”

The lights flickered again. I moved away and stood, reaching to turn on the shower. “Was an accident.”

“Was it your dad?”

I pulled two towels out of the cabinet and dropped them next to the shower. “Come on, Potter. Get in. You smell like shit.”

We took off our clothes and stepped into the mist of warm water. I sat on the bottom of the slippery white tub and pulled him between my legs and washed his dirty sunshine hair with coconut shampoo. After, we got dressed again in wrinkled tee-shirts we found on his bedroom floor. I threw the shirt he’d thrown up on into the dryer in the garage. There was nothing else, so I wrapped his hand in an old tee-shirt, and then I pushed him gently onto the bed and lit the cigarette he had between his teeth.

As I lay on top of the wrinkled covers, he ashed the cigarette on the smooth wood of the nightstand. He rubbed his face, eyes squeezed shut. He pushed back his damp hair. He sighed, but it didn’t make a sound. It was like he collapsed, into himself, silently.

I closed my eyes and reached for his arm blindly. My fingers caught his wrist. I pulled, and he came easily, rolling down next to me. I kept hold of his wrist between our bodies as my eyes fell closed. 

When I woke up, light peeked through the window.

Theo said my name.

I looked at him. “Hmm?”

So close together, it was like we’d wrapped ourselves in a bubble of warmth that contained only us.

“Where do you think you’ll go?” he asked. He was barely awake.

In morning light, his eyelashes glowed soft and gold like feathers. His lips, chapped as they always were. All of him blurry like a painting. Watercolour. “Potter. Don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean, after this. When you leave...here...and go somewhere else…” His words trailed off.

He did this when he was drunk, said things like puzzles I had to put together--I often didn’t figure them out. But this one thing came up again and again, the question he asked me in hundreds of ways. Will you stay here, will you go there, will you find something else you like better? Will you remember this, weeks or years from now? Or not at all. Or is there nothing to remember?

“Potter,” I said.

“Shut up.”

That made me open my eyes. His were squeezed shut. He must’ve realised what he’d said. Not that drunk anymore, then. Enough to say it, but not enough to hear the answer.

I answered anyway.

“I am not going to any place right now. I will be here for long time. Maybe for forever.”

His hand, under mine, shifted.

“Don’t be an idiot.” His mouth barely moved when he said it.

“Cannot help it,” I said, smiling a little. Without thinking, I ran my thumb over the back of his hand. 

He opened his eyes. Huge pupils taking up all of the honey brown. “But you left all the other places,” he said.

I swallowed. Our fingers tangled together, a faint scent of coconut. I shook my head. “Is different.”

“How?”

“Because. Was before.”

There was that little line between his eyebrows. “...before what?”

I did not want to have to tell him. I wanted him to know without me saying. We looked at each other for a long time, not a single word. Was I in love with him? He was not in love with me, but maybe I was. I should’ve just drank two hundred beers and admitted it. But I wasn’t sure of anything I felt except the fact that I felt it. It had no words. It was not friendship, and it was not romance. It just was. It was too much and not enough at the same time.

His hand curled around mine, and he did something he had never done before. He leaned over and kissed my mouth. Lips barely touching at first, and then pressing farther, hesitating, hot.

I kissed him back, sliding my fingers into his hair. This was telling him everything, every word from every silence. Wet and warmth, gasps of breath, hands under shirts. If there is a colour for those days, a colour for me and him, a colour for kisses and dying, it is every colour of gold and brown and yellow, the dark lights and the pale shadows in the almost darkness. The memory is blurry but the colours are there and the feelings are there and they are sharp and cut like knives to remember. It aches. 

“You need toothbrush,” I murmured.

He laughed and whispered, “Sorry,” as he pulled away.

“Shut up.”

“Okay. Boris?”

“Potter.”

“If you go somewhere, take me with you, okay?”

“Not going anywhere.”

“Okay.”

I would not go anywhere. It had nothing to do with my father or his job—I would be here as long as here existed. It had nothing to do with Theo’s dad, either. It had nothing to do with anyone else or with school or futures or tomorrow. It had only to do with him and me. Us there in that place. It had only to do with that being right. Sometimes you step into a place and you fit. You visit a dream and you stay there forever, real life finds you and tries to drag you back bleeding, and the feelings you feel are like music. They’re like being hungry. They’re like listening. To someone else. I don’t want to listen to myself, I want to hear his voice, hear what he remembers. It’s okay. Don’t cry. You’re okay now, I promise, shh, baby, I love you, but don’t tell—

We fell asleep without space between us.


	4. knowing everything

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> up until this point, when I wrote this fic I was trying to make it super realistic (something I probably failed at)—basically i wanted the story to be things that could have actually happened between Theo and Boris in the book (& the movie too i guess). I’m writing this note to say that it is in this chapter that I become a huge sap™️ and pretty much throw all that “be realistic” bullshit out the window because, goddammit, this is fanfiction and I’m doing what makes me happy. Obviously I’m still doing my best to write the characters personalities and whatever, that’s not gonna change, but they’re becoming a lot more affectionate with each other than I think is realistic to canon but whatever  
> this is a short chapter with some fluff lol bc i am in need of fluff right now  
> hope you like it <3 <3 <3

There was more than one kind of kiss now. There were still the first kisses, always nervous about whether he’d accept them, or the deeper and surer kisses with lots of noises in between. Now there were “is okay” kisses, usually in the dark when Theo woke up or he could not sleep and I moved closer and kissed him and he stopped moving around. There were also angry kisses, which happened when I was pissed off at him for doing another thing to get himself killed. 

He often went to lay in the middle of the street.

“Come on, Potter.”

“No.” His eyes locked to the sky, and he looked like he really could not get up by himself.

“No ‘no’ anymore. I am serious. No more. Get off the fucking road or I will drag you.”

After I finally got him inside, after he’d eaten half a granola bar and was not crying, we sat the way we always did. On the floor, with the TV buzz in the background of our breathing smoke in and out of our mouths.

“Sorry,” he muttered.

“Shut up.” It had no sharpness to it--these words were natural when I said them. Not angry, just used to it so much that I fell into saying them without even trying. Just, “don’t.”

He tugged at the carpet. His cigarette wasted between the fingers of his other hand. “I won’t do it again.”

I snorted.

He looked up, his eyes flashing. “I won’t. I mean it. You asshole.”

I opened my mouth, but only smoke left it. On the TV screen, grey people walked through grey places, their faces all like stone, no motion. I shrugged one shoulder, rolling it careless as if I didn’t give a shit about anything. “Whatever, okay.”

That didn’t satisfy him. He kept rolling his cigarette between his fingers without using it, so when I finished mine I reached over and took his. I did it slowly enough that our hands touched longer than they should.

I took a long drag, held it in while he watched me, breathed it out.

“Are you mad?” he asked.

I rolled my eyes. 

“You are.”

“Potter, I am not--fuck, yes, I’m mad. I’m pissed.”

“You--”

Quickly, in one motion, I stubbed the cigarette out on the plate next to me, turned to cup his face in my hands and kiss him very hard. He was frozen for two seconds before he kissed me back, hesitating like he always did when we first started.

God. Chapped lips and smokey breath. 

It felt like forever since we had kissed last, but I stopped. Just as quick as I had moved toward him, I pulled away.

His lips and cheeks were warm now, and he swallowed.

“I am pissed at you,” I said, slowly. One hand fisted into his tee-shirt, my voice was very low. Anyone else in the world would have thought I really was only mad at him. But I think he knew what I meant was more than I was fucking mad, not for his nightmares or his moments where he couldn’t take things anymore, but for sometimes not letting me pull him away from all the places he went to hurt himself. If he was lying in the road and begging me to leave him there, I wanted to pull him away and take him to where he was safe. But he did not always let me. Also I was not angry at all. I was just doomed. I loved him too much, was not good. How much I loved him was like standing on edge of a cliff so high up. I was asking to fall. Just that I cared about him. Just that I cared but could not say it--that was what I tried to make him know when I said I was pissed and then kissed him that way.

This was dangerous.

Things were changing--maybe he knew it, but he was even better than me at ignoring, at pretending stuff wasn’t happening even though he was in the middle of it. At night I threw an arm or a leg over him, some form of contact, something he could lean into. For a long time, he never touched me first. I had to be the one to move closer, and when I did he would relax into it. But after that time in the kitchen where we were spooning peanut butter out of the jar and into our mouths, and I said something about how American’s steal all the food from other countries and the food they do make themselves is disgusting, and he said then why are you eating it, and I said shut up, and he laughed and I couldn’t keep myself from leaning closer. And he kissed me so softly. Too gentle. These were not the kind of kisses we usually had--the regular kisses we had were fast and more rough with lots of little noises, those were kisses for people who only want each other’s bodies. But these soft kisses were for people who loved each other. And we could not be in love. 

I pretended the changes meant nothing. That he was my best friend and I just kissed him sometimes. But I did not only kiss him, I held him at night, I touched his hair. I kissed not only his lips--I kissed his nose and his shoulder and his neck and the tips of his fingers until he stopped being surprised and started to kiss me before I got there first. We met in the middle. Same distance. I travelled one thousand miles, and he traveled one thousand too.

I could tell. For a long time. This was a bad idea. It would hurt me. Loving him that much would hurt me. I didn’t know how or when, but I knew something would happen and I would hurt.

Here is something that happened in the dark--me and him, we were proof that in the dark, people say things as though there is nothing to stop them anymore.

“I think you know all my secrets,” he said.

I opened my eyes. 

He was next to me on the bed, our legs overlapping beneath the covers. His face was calm, soft closed eyes from sleep. 

I thought I had imagined him saying it.

But he shifted a tiny bit closer. He whispered, “You know everything.”

I swallowed. 

The dark was a blanket, thick and velvet.

I brought up my hand and cupped the back of his neck. “I don’t know anything, Potter.”

“But you do.” He moved even closer, until his head was against my chest, and I was afraid he’d feel my heart beat out of order. “The only thing I haven’t told you about…” His voice faded away.

My fingers kept moving through his hair. “Hmm?”

He muttered something. “The painting.”

“What? What’re you going on about, Potter, is late…”

“I stole it.” He sighed, a hot breath against my chest. “At the museum.”

I was beginning to sweat, being under the covers and so close wrapped up with him, no space between us, but I did not move. I couldn’t keep my eyes open. My head hurt faintly. “You are crazy, Potter. You drive me crazy, you know…”

“It’s famous.”

“What is?”

“The painting.”

I scoffed softly, shook my head. Only a week or so before I might have shoved him, laughed at him, made a stupid joke and refused to let it go. But I was tired. It was as if I could only do and say things I really meant. In the dark.

“You are going to kill me,” I whispered. I did not think about whether I should have said it out loud. Or what it meant. 

“I’m not gonna kill you...you’re gonna kill me.”

“Shut up.”

“I hate you.”

“Liar.”

“Yeah. I am.”

We were silent. I thought he was asleep, there was that buzz from quietness in the air, but he said, “It’s behind the headboard.”

I groaned softly. “You idiot.”

“The painting,” he said.

I later told so many lies--I am the liar, really, not him--about how it happened. 

I nudged him with my leg, too tired to kick him properly. “Sleep.”

Six seconds. One, two, three, four, five, six--

And then his voice.

“I don’t hate you. I love you.”

I could not move from how scared I was. “Be quiet, Potter. Sleep.”

He slept.

I did not.

A couple days after that night, he fell asleep on the floor downstairs and, only as a joke to myself, I went to his room and slid a hand behind the wood of his bed. I stopped when I felt something there. 

Fucking idiot.

Him and me, both.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh my gOD


End file.
